What are your favorite 'famous' historical peices of world literature?

Walden by Henry David Thoreau is by far one of my favorite pieces of work. The beautiful philosophies of an all-natural simple life are utterly inspiring. My 10th grade English teacher played a huge roll in introducing me to this piece of literature and to this day I send her thank you notes for bringing such an inspiring piece into my life.

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe still stands as one of my favorite peices of poetry. It never fails to amaze me that Thoreau and Poe came from approximately the same time in history yet have completely different perspectives on life.

Thanks, Harry. I will look into that. Don't know who would replace M'Lady. I actually was pulling for her.

Here's part of what I wrote about my eBook edition of it, which may be of interest:

Quote:

Everyone is familiar with The Three Musketeers, thanks to the many movies which have been made of this book, some of them sharing little more than the name in common with the actual book

What some people may be unaware of is that The Three Musketeers is merely the first (small) part of a set of three books called, as a whole, the D'Artagnan Romances, which collectively tell the life story of D'Artagnan, who appears as a young man in The Three Musketeers. The book is, like its main protagonist, of truly heroic proportions. If you think that War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings would be quite good if only they were longer, this is the series for you .

This gets a bit complicated, so pay attention (there will be a test at the end)...

The D'Artagnan Romances consists of three books:

1. The Three Musketeers.
2. Twenty Years After (set 20 years after The Three Musketeers).
3. The Vicomte de Bragelonne (set 10 years after part 2 - ie 30 years after The Three Musketeers).

OK, so far, so good. Where it gets complicated is that the final book in the series is a truly gargantuan work, and is generally published split into either 3, 4, or 5 separate volumes. This edition uses the four volume version, and these four volumes are called, respectively:

3a. The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
3b. Ten Years Later.
3c. Louise de la Valliere.
3d. The Man in the Iron Mask.

Where things get complicated is that The Vicomte de Bragelonne can refer to either the whole of this third book, or just to the first volume of it. Moreover, it is subtitled Ten Years Later, so once again this title can refer to the whole book or just the second volume of it. Finally, just to confuse matters, The Man in the Iron Mask is often printed as a "self-contained" novel, and can be split up in quite a different manner from the 4-part split described above.

I've read RLS's The Master of Ballantrae three or four times, which probably makes it my favourite classic novel. I haven't read any other more than twice. I can't explain why I've re-read it so many times; maybe because of its reasonable length.